Dream Job

ARTICLES ABOUT DREAM JOB BY DATE - PAGE 5

If Adam Beckerman gets his dream job when he graduates from Columbia Business School next month, he'll face long hours, an uncertain career trajectory, and a substantial pay cut from his $100,000-plus pre-MBA consulting salary. As an executive for Hermès, Chanel, or the holy grail of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, he can anticipate a starting annual salary of roughly $50,000 ? a fraction of his Columbia peers' $135,000 average starting salary package. Clearly, money is not his sole object.

All I knew about Chamba, before I visited this charming town 1000 metres above sea level, was that their womenfolk wore beautifully embroidered 'Rumals' tied on their heads. These are large squares, which are beautifully hand-embroidered and worn by the womenfolk, on festive occasions. Chamba, built on a ledge, has steep mountains on one side and a sheer drop on the other. Most houses in the area have slate roofs, many of which are over 300 years old. Just 56 km from the popular hill station Dalhousie, it is situated at a lower altitude and overlooks the River Ravi.

Times have changed since the 1980s when there was just one-way movement of skilled, trained and educated workers from India to the US and several other developed countries. In fact, there's now a reverse trend among Persons of Indian Origin (PIOs) to work in India. While there may not be an exodus yet, this trend, of India as a jobs destination of choice, seems likely to continue for the next few years. Several factors have contributed to this interest.

This is indeed the e-age. Till a couple of years back, you would be desperately waiting near your phone hoping to get a call from the head hunters . Buying number of newspapers to find new jobs was very common with the youth. Now, your dream job is just a click away . Yes, we are talking about job hunting on the net. You just have to switch on the computer and check for a job. E-recruitment is not only cost effective for the organisations, it is convenient for job seekers as well.

In a recent visit to India Steven Covey, the management guru, spoke about the importance of continuing education and keeping oneself updated with the latest developments. These words of wisdom are the catch phrase for today's knowledge-based economy. A simple statistic corroborates the growing importance of education; back in the early 1990s the country had about 100 B-schools, today we have around 1,000, churning about 50,000 management graduates every year. Also, with the Indian economy opening up and corporates offering lucrative salaries, many Indians armed with a MBA degree from reputed international B-schools are homeward bound.

For a 28-year-old who started off at $300 a month for a company in Jamshedpur, it was a dream come true to have secured a job in the US at $52,000 a year. And she was not disappointed when she landed at Pittsburgh to join her American employers. But one year down the line, Aishita Pramanik has packed her bags and taken the flight back to India. Pramanik's case, as reported on the Website of Rocky Mountain News , is not an isolated one. After having landed a dream job abroad, an increasing number of Indians are willing to call it quits and make their way home.

He plays the drums in a band called One Night Stand, says his musical influences are Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Pink Floyd and the Doors. He's into reading books about folk mythology and Chinese history ? "I know all about Indian culture, so I thought I'd read about China. I don't read the fiction type of things," says Rahul Malhotra. He's not, as one may immediately assume, an 18-year old wannabe rocker. He's the country marketing manager of Procter & Gamble India, and he immediately tries to tone down his image by insisting that he's your average low-profile guy with no social life at all. "He's lying," sniffs a colleague, and under duress, Malhotra changes his tune ?

He plays the drums in a band called One Night Stand, says his musical influences are Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Pink Floyd and the Doors. He's into reading books about folk mythology and Chinese history ? "I know all about Indian culture, so I thought I'd read about China. I don't read the fiction type of things," says Rahul Malhotra. He's not, as one may immediately assume, an 18-year old wannabe rocker. He's the country marketing manager of Procter & Gamble India, and he immediately tries to tone down his image by insisting that he's your average low-profile guy with no social life at all. "He's lying," sniffs a colleague, and under duress, Malhotra changes his tune ?

I am working in a leading public sector bank. I am a graduate but my wife is working in an IT company with a degree in computer engineering. We plan to migrate to the US very soon. There might not be ready jobs waiting for me in the US and my wife will also have problems in landing up with a job. I am quite apprehensive about my future because of lack of my market value. What kind of courses, both IT and non-IT, should I undergo for making a good living abroad? Ritesh Facing reality is very important.

There's a new source of recruitment for mid-level techies looking for a change. TVA Infotech, a Bangalore-based recruitment firm, recently launched two career helplines, the TVA Career Line and another specialised line for Oracle. Gautam Sinha, CEO, TVA Infotech, says these toll-free recruitment lines target the passive job-seeker, who is unwilling to browse through a recruitment portal, apply via a newspaper ad or visit a placement agency. He says this type of job seeker misses lucrative career changes due to ignorance or a reluctance to change.